On Sun, 13 Feb 2000, Paul S Vail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> replied to
>>Or so I thought ..... 2 days later I could no longer stand the mocking
>>visage of my dead PB2400 and I plugged the thing in. Hello, it perks right up,
>>loads the OS and now it is running fine.
>>
>>Any ideas about what is going on here?
>
> Ya know, kids, is it entirely possible some kind of intermittant contact
> occurs in the battery bay? Like the bandaid fix for the 3400s? I've not
> encountered a 2400 I couldn't resurrect (sometimes it took the old
> _take_it_all_apart_then_back_together fix... but I do this for a living
> so the screw matrix doesn't bother me anymore). You folks who play with
> these things daily -- notice any coincedence with your battery bay?
>
> paul
>
In an earlier reply to this thread I said:
Another (unverified) suspicion I have is that a frayed AC adapter wire
can also contribute to this sudden "corruption" problem (for lack of a
better descriptive term). In short, the "green light of death" is less
terminal than it may seem.
To Paul's comments, to which I wholly agree, I'd add that the screw matrix
itself can also loosen. The female brass inserts into the plastic molded
sockets can pull up or out causing the 2400 lower case not to close tightly
on the battery compartment. This can result in a loose fit of the battery
and intermittent loss of contact. (The trade-off to excessive tightening
resulting in the described condition is screws loosening and falling out
inside a sealed 2400!) In any case, I increasingly suspect an intermittent
loss of electrical contact can partially corrupt the PM and/or PRAM in the
2400 resulting in symptoms like a "dying" motherboard or CPU.
A weird variation that I've also experienced three times is that my HD disk
directory has been corrupted enough not to allow a boot on the 2400, not to
be repairable by TTPro or NDD5.0, not to allow external SCSI or PC card HD
drives alternately boot, not to allow a Apple OS CD boot, not to allow the
external floppy w/Disk Repairs to succeed. Sometimes it booted partially and
on successive attempts deteriorated until the dreaded flashing "?" appeared.
Resetting PM & PRAM doesn't help. Yet, swapping the same 6.4g drive to my
3500 upgraded 3400 boots up perfectly without any repairs at all! Then only
Disk Warrior can accomplish the "impossible" (or is it the "improbable"?)
and I have to transplant it back into the 2400. Now consider these symptoms
while trying to sort out PM, PRAM, CPU, PRAM battery and other possible
issues. I've seen other listers mention problems (the mysterious,
inexplicable ones) to which I could have replied, further underling my
feeling that the 2400 is FAR AND AWAY the most idiosyncratic and
unpredictable computer I've ever encountered. Letting it sit a while as a
basket of parts seems to help greatly if you have no fear of the screw
matrix. It actually can be brought back from the dead (nearly) every time,
despite showing every sign of being an MB/PB or CPU card or terminal. I
suspect several listers have paid for unnecessary parts. But living in a
country where no 2400 service exists forces a little more resourcefulness.
Unlike Paul who does it for a living voluntarily, I've had to do it for a
living :).
---
Sidney Ho
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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